


In the forests of the night.

by orange_crushed



Series: In the forests of the night. [1]
Category: Karppi | Deadwind (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Love, Season/Series 02, Suicidal Thoughts, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: “Still want me to let you out?” Karppi says, hollowly, soft; he realizes with a start that he’s been speaking aloud. Something cold and horrible slithers down his spine and settles in his gut; a feeling of dread, a shame that chokes him. He falls back against the wall, as far away from her as he can possibly be. His arms ache at the odd angle.There is something very wrong with him.
Relationships: Sofia Karppi/Sakari Nurmi
Series: In the forests of the night. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901992
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34





	In the forests of the night.

He wakes all at once, like a shock of cold water: his eyes snap open and his body jerks upright and then flops back again, restrained. He’s been handcuffed to something. His wrists strain in the metal, almost hard enough to cut. He wriggles and they clatter and rattle against the pipe, but hold. His head’s swimming. He doesn’t remember coming here, doesn’t remember anything; nothing after getting in the borrowed car at Tallinn, sliding into the driver’s seat and…. nothing. It’s empty. He’s dressed in the same clothes; his jeans are dark with stains, stiff from drying on his legs. Someone’s taken his shoes off. There’s an emergency lantern hanging from a doorknob on the other side of the room, but the light’s faint and weak. He’s alone in the dark, somewhere that smells like damp earth and bleach and fabric softener. Alone and—

No. Not alone. He can—he can hear a heartbeat. Somehow. His eyes trace the edges of the concrete floor, the closed door, the slumped-over pile of laundry next to it. The pile of laundry stirs, kicks out sluggishly with one boot, startling him. 

“Karppi,” he says. He doesn’t know how he knows, he just knows. It’s her. He doesn’t want to think about it. “Karppi,” he says, louder. He clears his throat: it feels rusted, dry as bone. It hurts to speak, almost. He’s parched. He licks his lips. 

She sits up, pushes the sleeping bag off herself. Her tangled hair is like white gold in the weak lamplight, her face like fresh ice. She blinks at him. Focuses. Then settles in to watch him, without speaking. Her face is unreadable, shuttered. Like he’s a perp: a stranger. He rattles his handcuffs again, beyond confused. “Did you go crazy?” he says, letting some of his frustration creep into his voice. “Let me out of these.”

“How are you feeling?” she says. Her hands are still knotted in the lining of the sleeping bag. She doesn’t get up. He can hear her heart flutter, beat harder and faster. It makes him angrier, suddenly. He doesn’t know why.

“Like I’m chained up in a fucking basement for no good fucking reason,” he says, low and vicious. He’s furious, he can feel himself boiling like a kettle inside. It’s come out of nowhere, this rage, and it’s eating at his guts. It's nothing like anything he's felt before, and it’s taking everything in him not to scream at her. He tugs at the cuffs again, harder: it hurts less, this time, or else he no longer cares. “Let me out, Karppi. I’m serious.” She gives him the faintest, slivered half-moon of a smile.

“Are you hungry?” she says.

“Yes,” he hisses, automatically. He is: his stomach’s clenching and his teeth ache, strangely, with the need to chew, to tear. His face feels hot. Who knows how long he’s been down here—did she drug him? Knock him out? Nothing makes any sense. His arms jerk again, and he rises up to his knees to drag at the pipe, to bear his weight against it. “I’m fucking starving!” he yells, without meaning to. “Get me out of here. Get me out now!”

“What do you remember about yesterday?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!” he screams, and jerks his arms harder and harder, grunting with the effort. “What the fuck did you do to me?” He looks up at her and now there’s something strange, stranger about her: the world’s gone reddish at the edges, like he’s looking at a mirage. His face throbs. She’s outlined in orange light, radiating slightly, like she’s a reading on a heat map: she’s warm, hot at her core, glowing from the subtle flare of red around her heart, her guts, her cunt. Karppi inhales, shocked at something, and her heart hammers in his ears. He’s overcome by a wash of fury and another, deeper ache of hunger and desperation; he surges against the pipes until his wrist nearly snaps. The pain barely registers. It’s meaningless. Everything in him is tuned to her like a dial, like the point of an arrow. He’s never wanted anything in his entire life the way he wants to crawl across this floor and bury himself in her: he wants to sink into her, mouth and hands and cock, he wants to suck at the soft curve of her throat and the white flesh of her belly and her thighs, he wants to bite her shoulders and her wrists, fuck her and consume her and disappear inside her, wants to feel her blood spill hotter than flame between his lips, down his throat. His mouth hangs open, like a dog’s. He’s baring his teeth like one, too.

“Still want me to let you out?” Karppi says, hollowly, soft; he realizes with a start that he’s been speaking aloud. Something cold and horrible slithers down his spine and settles in his gut; a feeling of dread, a shame that chokes him. He falls back against the wall, as far away from her as he can possibly be. His arms ache at the odd angle.

There is something very wrong with him.

“What is this?” he whispers. “What happened?”

“You’ve... changed.”

“No _shit_ ,” he snaps, and Karppi’s mouth turns up in surprise, a pleasure tinged by grief. Her face is like—like he’d already died, and she never expected to see him again. Another rational part of him shrivels up in horror. 

“This would be easier if I could show you in a mirror,” she says, and the whole world stops for a second while he realizes what she means. There is a long silence in which neither of them do anything else but stare at one another: him numb, Karppi looking like she's daring him to deny… everything. Here in the dark there's nothing but the distant rumble of cars somewhere above or around them, a clanging that might be an elevator. The basement of her own apartment building, maybe. Or maybe not. He can hear her breathing, quietly and even, like she's measuring them to stay calm. It takes a moment for him to realize he's… not.

 _Oh God_ , he thinks, blankly, and then sucks in a mouthful of air: he was simply holding his breath, of course. Surely. The air goes in and then goes out again; he deflates like a balloon and nothing happens. He's not light-headed, not gasping. He's fine. Absolutely fine. Sakari feels cold all over. He bends over awkwardly then, twists so he can put a hand up to his face. And finds it… shifting, unfamiliar, under his touch. There are ridges along his eyes, his mouth, there are—four sharp horrible new teeth behind his lips, upper and lower, predator's teeth mangled in with his own, his normal straight human teeth that eat mostly vegetables and cheese and bread. 

“Oh my God,” he says, and sinks lower against the cold wall. His body shakes with a dry sob. “What is this?” 

"I've seen it before," Karppi says, evenly, though he can still hear her heart pounding. "Years ago. You were maybe still in finance division. There was a girl—"

"You've seen _this_ before?" he interrupts, incredulously. Karppi glares at him, which is… hilarious, if he thinks about it too long. Him with a new mouthful of tiger fangs, and Karppi just the same, the same as ever. He feels dizzy now. Inhaling doesn't help. "Am I dreaming?" he says, distantly. "Is this some kind of… hallucination?"

Karppi shakes her head.

"The girl was exsanguinated," she says, finally. "Completely drained. We thought at first it was a compulsive thing, some kind of ritual." Karppi's mouth thins into a line. "We found him, though. With another victim. Eating them. Drinking them, I mean. I didn't believe it at first. I wouldn't believe, but Koskimaki," she says, and looks away briefly, at the floor between them. "He'd seen it before, too."

"How—"

"It surprised us at the cottage," Karppi says, sour-faced. "It knew where we were. Either it's the killer or some kind of partner." He can feel it, somehow, the ember of her anger: she's burning with a quiet rage he can only sense in the patter of her heart, the hard set of her jaw. Rage at him? For the thing they were tracking? He doesn't know. "Knocked me around and," she gestures at him. "Did things to you. I shot it twice, otherwise it might have done both of us." She rests her head back against the wall. "It probably thought it had, anyway. If I didn't recognize... you would have killed me by now."

 _No_ , he thinks. But he doesn't say it. He is ashamed to realize it's probably true.

"What do I do?" he says. He can focus on that, at least. If this is… some kind of transmittable thing. A physical condition, a sickness passed from one body to another. There's got to be some chance. "How do I undo it?"

There's pity in her eyes.

"There's no undoing," she says. "You are what you are."

Karppi looks down at her phone, then; he can hear it vibrating in her lap. She unlocks it and the light of the screen washes out her face for a second, bathes her in artificial greenish sunlight. 

"Does anyone know?"

*No," she says, still staring down into her phone. "I said you were sick. You're on leave for the next two days." Karppi types rapidly and then turns her phone off, shoves it back into the back of her jeans. She looks at him. Even in the dark, he can see the circles under her eyes. She looks exhausted. "You changed back," she says, suddenly. Her face softens a little: she looks wistful for a second. Hopeful. It's like touching a bruise: he aches at it, without understanding. "Your," she says, and sketches the air around her face with one finger. He bends down again, self-consciously, to touch his cheeks, his forehead: the ridges are gone again. The strange teeth, too. "They can all do that," she says, when he looks up at her, an eager question dying in his throat. "Change their faces back and forth. I think it helps them blend in."

"Oh," he says.

"I don't know how," she says, apologetically. After a minute she gets up onto her knees, then wobbles to her feet and starts to gather up the sleeping bag. "I'll come back tonight," she says, without meeting his eyes. "Bring you some—food."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Sleep," she says. "Or… I can leave your phone, maybe." She chews her lip. "You can't call anyone."

"You want me to stay locked up down here?"

"If you call someone here, to let you out, you'll kill them," she says, bluntly. He scowls at her, and she scowls back. Folds her arms. "Tell me I’m wrong."

He can't.

Karppi sighs. "I'll be back early. Just…stay here." 

"I'm still," he says, haltingly, when her hand is on the doorknob. "I'm still me, inside." He hopes it’s true. Karppi looks back. For a second before she closes off again, he can see it in her haunted look, her trembling mouth: the crushed petals, the shattered ice spreading in webs and cracks. It closes his throat with grief. 

He's broken her heart.

"I know," she says. "I know."

She comes back at sunset, though he's not sure how he knows that. She smells like the cold, like snow and chemical salt; there are melting flakes on the shoulders of her parka, the ends of her hair. He dozed all day, his mind circling around uselessly or fixating on some tiny inconsequential sound somewhere else in the basement. His senses are keener than ever, almost unbearably so: he hears her coming long before the door opens. There’s a crunching sound now and again, like she’s walking on seashells: maybe it’s bits of concrete, some kind of industrial site. He still doesn’t know where she’s brought him. When she gets close to the door he hears her heartbeat from the opposite side. Pounding again.

"I can smell you," he blurts out, and Karppi freezes in the open doorway, then closes it behind her and sits down on the floor in front of him, out of reach. She has a heavy-looking paper bag with her, and she's showered recently. She looks at him with mild curiosity: a detective, after all.

"My shampoo?"

"No," he says. He looks away. He can't bear it, for a second: the warm golden sight of her. "You."

"Your face is bumpy again," she says. "Did you do it on purpose?"

*No," he says, horrified. Karppi shrugs. And pulls out a plastic pint container filled with red soup. _Not soup_ , he thinks. A chill goes up the back of his neck, but something else ripples in his gut. "I can't drink that."

"You have to." She cracks off the lid and now he can smell it, really smell it: coppery and thick. He inhales and it floods him, shoots to his head and his teeth and makes him rock forward drunkenly until he's almost close enough to lap from the open container like an animal. Karppi holds it up, tilts it like a cup, and then blood is dribbling into his mouth and coating his tongue; the noise he makes at the taste is actually inhuman. He swallows it down and she tilts it higher for him and then he's gulping, lapping, slurping at it, sucking it up with abandon, lost to the sensation of warmth and life and nourishment racing through his veins, his limbs, raising every fine hair on his skin. He's never tasted anything so delicious. He didn't know he was cold before, didn't know that he was freezing before this liquid heat sank into him, filled him up, warmed him to the core. He can't get it in fast enough. He can't get enough. And suddenly it's over, Karppi's pulling away the empty plastic, and he bares his teeth at her in fury and—actually growls. They both start in shock at the sound. 

"Excuse me," he says, absurdly, and Karppi raises her eyebrows. He feels his cheeks flush. "Fuck you," he says, without malice. "I don't know what I'm doing either."

"Hmm," is all she says. She opens a second pint for him.

When he's fed they sit in silence for a while, studiously not looking at each other. His wrists are freshly itching; healing, he thinks. Healing fast. The blood must be more than food for him now. Sakari leans his head back against the wall. He’s never been such a stranger in his own body before; not even the drugs did this, left him this raw and vibrating at every nerve. He tries not to focus on his closing cuts. She thumbs through her phone and picks at a bag of crisps pulled from her pocket, and the deja vu is painful and overwhelming. How many times has he sat beside her in the car just like this, mindlessly picking at a salad, half-heartedly chewing his way through an uninspiring sandwich without a word? He's full and heavy and warmed and so ashamed of his pleasure that he could die, and she's a block of seemingly impenetrable stone beside him, licking her fingers and pretending he doesn't exist. The day she spent away from him was apparently sufficient time for her to bury her feelings.

"Why did you bring me here?" he says, when he can't stand another second of the quiet. “Why not just…” he says, and doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to; when her eyes meet his, he knows she understands.

“Are you sorry I didn’t?” she says. There’s defensiveness in her tone, her hunched shoulders. Her feelings aren’t buried as deeply as he thought, maybe. “Are you that eager to die?”

“Am I not dead already?” he says, softly, and Karppi goes still for a second. She wads up the bag of chips and stuffs it back into her pocket, rises to her knees like she’s going to leave. But she doesn’t. Instead she rests her palms on her thighs and stares at him, hard-faced.

“I have a job,” she says. “An unfinished… you may not care anymore, but I do. I thought maybe,” she says, and cuts off. Shakes her head.

Sakari blinks.

“You want me to keep investigating with you?” he says, surprised. “How would that work? You can’t trust me.”

“You’re fed,” she says. “If you keep feeding like that, maybe you won’t, you know. Have those urges.” She leans in a little. “How do you feel right now? You still want to bite me?”

Yes, he thinks, but it’s not the hunger in his gut talking anymore. It’s something else. He’s full and sated and even a little drunk right now, like after a good holiday meal: he feels guilty but fantastic. Almost human. More than human. His stomach has nothing to do with the feeling that he’d like nothing more than to lower himself over her body, fit her hips around his and set his blunt human teeth gently to her collarbone. It’s not the first time he’s had this feeling but it’s stronger now, everything’s stronger: like a polite upper layer of him has been scraped away, leaving the blood-red thoughts beneath floating closer to the surface.

“No,” he says. He clears his throat, embarrassed. “I don’t.”

“If you’re lying to me,” she says, “and you kill me, and my children are left with nobody, I will come back from the fucking grave and saw your head off.”

They stare at each other for a moment.

“That’s fair,” he says, dizzily. 

Karppi plugs in another, brighter lantern and then leans in and uncuffs one of his hands, moving away quickly and tucking the key back into the front pocket of her jeans afterwards. He flexes his wrist. The skin is perfectly smooth again. He tries not to move too quickly, tries not to startle or crowd her; there’s something loose and fluid in his movements, more than there was before. He can move his arm almost faster than he can think about doing it. That’s… something to think about later, he thinks. Or never. He folds his free hand in his lap and she pulls a plastic evidence bag out of another pocket in her coat; she never seems to run out of places to stash things. There are folded-up drawings inside, dark pencil drawings of hands, the same hand over and over, heavily outlined and shadowed, like the person making them was scrubbing their memories out with every stroke. Karppi turns them around and around, staring into their lines as if she can read them.

"Jere was bloodless, too," she says, after a little while. She looks up. "I didn't tell you about that."

"Why not?"

"I didn't think… his neck was cut, we thought from the cord. He was caught upside-down on a bar inside the well, forensics thought he might have just—drained, that way. From gravity."

"But probably not," he says, faintly.

"Probably not," she echoes. "I don't know about the others, though." She goes back to the drawings. Holds one up to show him. “What do you think?”

“Looks like,” he says, and thinks. “A steering wheel, maybe. Like you’re seeing it from the passenger seat.” She considers it.

“Back seat,” she says, after a minute. He sees it now, nods his head. “She was kidnapped there. Those marks on her throat… that’s where it started. In Estonia. That’s where everything started.”

He reaches out and unfolds another drawing from her pile, a close-up of the hand. There’s a chunky ring on the little finger. He holds it up for her to look at. 

“Isn’t that—”

“Academy ring.” Karppi’s face is grim. “Older design.” Sakari feels himself grimace. It’s an ugly conclusion, but almost inevitable now. “Not many other people knew where we were going.” She folds the papers up again, sides them back into the bag.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go to Kulju’s,” she says, and stands up. “He's got a boat, doesn't he? There’s got to be something there.” He jerks against the single handcuff, slides up onto his knees.

“Hey. Not by yourself.”

“He won’t be there.”

“Don’t take risks,” he says, and pulls at the cuffs again, rattling them loudly. “Come on. Don’t go alone.” Karppi stares down at him, curiously. 

“You want to come with me?” she says. “How is that not a risk?”

“I’m not going to do anything,” he says. “I promise.”

“Huh.” She breathes out through her nose, slowly. She looks at him the way she looks at evidence, at bodies face-down: looking for the cracks, the fingerprints, the left-behind hairs and telltale smudges. The fatal flaws. Her eyes are like cold hands turning him this way and that, exposing his vulnerable places. He’s never felt more seen, more naked. He can’t meet her eyes any longer. At last she snorts and fishes in her pocket for the handcuff key; she tosses it into his lap. “I’m not ready to die,” she says. “Remember that.” And then, more hesitantly: “You think you can still drive?” He paused and gapes at her, from where he’s fumbling with the little lock. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says. She's really something. He stands up and remembers his bare feet. Wiggles his toes. “Where are my shoes?”

“Ah. Here.” 

The duffel bag has his shoes, his coat, his wallet and gun. Karppi watches as he reassembles himself, piece by piece. It’s surreal. He can’t imagine her dragging his body all the way down here, didn’t realize she had the strength for that. But she obviously did. The strength of will, he wouldn’t have doubted. “Careful,” she says, before they walk out. “There’s broken glass all over the tunnel.”

In the long low hallway he realizes he was right: they’re in the deeper basement of her apartment building, in some kind of old utility closet far behind the laundry and the storage depot for the units. It gets brighter as they move along. Their boots crunch as they walk around the corners, through a chain-link gate that Karppi has to unlock. While he waits he shakes some of the bits of glass off the bottom of his tread.

“What’s this from?”

“Me,” she says, and swings the gate open. But she stands a second longer, between him and the brighter room of storage lockers. “I thought it might slow you down,” she adds. Her eyes are like the bay in winter: dark and cold and utterly self-contained. “If it came to that.”

“Karppi,” he says. He swallows against the lump in his throat. “I hope I’m never your enemy.”

It’s dark already when they come up the stairs and go out the front doors of her building; the borrowed car from Tallinn is still parked at one of the spots close by the loading dock, out back. Apparently she brought him inside with a borrowed hand-cart, rolled up in a rug from the cottage and piled over with empty cardboard boxes.

“Wow,” he says. “You would do okay as a serial killer, I see.” She glares and tosses him the keys over the roof; he catches it without thinking, snatches it cleanly out of midair. Neither of them say anything about it.

Kulju isn’t home. When they go around the house Karppi finds a plastic baggie under one of the bushes in front with a handgun and a blister pack of subutex. They both raise their eyebrows at that and put it back where they found it. If it is Kulju’s doing, it’s strangely sloppy. They pick the lock on the kitchen door and go through the house silently, gloved, moving from room to room. He's never been to Kulju's place before; it's neat and slightly impersonal, except for a couple of marksmanship trophies and framed photographs of him at department events, medal ceremonies and retirement parties. Karppi picks up a frame from the sideboard in the dining room and hands it over: Kulju and Sten a decade younger, arms around each other's shoulders. "What are you thinking?" he says. She's chewing her lip again.

"Don't know," she says. "Maybe nothing." He waits. "Either way we have to tell Sten about him." She turns a slow circle, eyes scanning over the room again. "I'm missing something," she says. 

They're heading for the back, to check the boat, when something… tingles up his spine, up the back of his neck, flares through his sinuses like spice. Sakari stops and tilts his head up reflexively, unconsciously. He sniffs the air like an animal and then flushes, mortified. The smell floods him: something biting and strong, stronger than vinegar and equally sharp. He blinks the sting of it from his eyes. Karppi's watching him carefully with one hand on the back door and the other inside her coat. On her gun, he thinks, grimly. She's gone shimmery again, warm and red: he knows now his face must have shifted to ridges and fangs.

"There's," he says, and tries to force his face back under control. There must be a way. After a second he gives up. "I smell something," he says. Karppi follows him as he rummages through the cupboards, sniffing; he goes into the hall and stands before the pantry, sucks in a breath and flinches at the strength of it. He opens the door and she flicks on the overhead light. It's normal inside, just a jumble of pasta boxes and cans of soup, a toolbox and packs of unused lightbulbs. Karppi nudges his shoulder to point out a package on the floor; it's only the barest brush of her elbow but the touch sets him on fire briefly, burning quick and hot like a rocket. His fingers dig into the doorframe while Karppi kneels down, unaware, and drags the slim flat box out from behind a pair of rubber boots. She holds it up to him and he backs away. "It stinks," he says. "I've never smelled anything like it."

Karppi sniffs at the box.

"I don't smell anything odd."

"Are you serious? It's like… black pepper."

"No." She shakes her head; her eyes are thoughtful. "To you, maybe."

There's a mounted photograph inside, blown up to almost poster size. Kulju and Sten again, this time more recent. Karppi gets up and takes it into the dining room. Holds it against the wall in the empty space above the sideboard, where there's still a single nail hole in the plaster. "Look," she says. He sees it at once: Kulju's bare hand. Sten's ring.

"Fuck," he says, under his breath. "What do we do?"

Karppi's still staring at the picture. She looks the way she did when he found her standing over Koskimaki; she's lost something again, something she trusted in.

"We need something concrete," she says.

They lock the back door and go down the little grassy slope to where Kulju's boat is moored; when they get within a couple feet of it his nose starts to twitch again. He cups his hands around his face, turns away from her, willing his mouth to stop being so fucking reactive. "You smell it again?" Karppi says. She touches his arm and a hot feeling rushes up from his stomach. He forces himself to straighten up and look at her; miraculously, he thinks his face has gone back to normal. "What is it?"

"I don't know. It's just strong here."

It gets even stronger inside the cabin, peppery and stinging. He tries to focus, process what he's sensing; there's something under the bite of it, something deeper and musky and metallic, a strange animal smell with a sickly richness to it. "Blood," he says, suddenly, when she's booting up the navigational computer. "I smell blood."

Karppi's face pales a little, though she doesn't tremble. The cabin is small, tight quarters for a fight, and the only door is behind him. He's aware of it suddenly, painfully: a predator's sense that he didn't ask for, doesn't want.

"Mine?" she asks.

"No," he says, shaking his head. "Old blood, under the… pepper smell. Old and rancid." A terrible, certain heaviness settles in his shoulders, drags his gaze down to the floor. "I think," he says. "I think it's the one who—made me," he finishes, in a rush. Karppi breathes out. She'd been holding it in.

"It was here?" He nods. "You think you could smell it, if it was nearby?" He nods again. "Could be useful," she says, hopefully, like she's trying to cheer things up. He smiles faintly, chin against the collar of his coat.

"Sure," he says.

The computer confirms a journey to Tallinn, and then they're back in the car, headed back to the center of the city. A gentle snow starts to fall in featherlike wisps across the windshield, and even though the heater is running Karppi burrows further into her parka, eyes trained firmly on the road ahead.

"Your leave will be up on Thursday," she says, almost in a whisper. "We'll have to figure something out."

He already has. But there's no need to worry her.

"Could switch to nights," he says, instead. "People do."

"Yeah," she says. She turns her cheek towards the passenger window. Her voice is distant, like the faint sound of waves. "It's an idea."

Karppi directs him to his own building; they go upstairs and inside and she gathers up some of his blankets, starts pinning them up in front of all his windows. 

"I chose this place for the light," he says, bleakly.

"Too bad," she says, all business, and shoves a duvet cover into his hands. "Go do the bathroom."

When she’s confident a stray sunbeam won’t immolate him, she handcuffs him to the metal underframe of his bed; it's probably less effective than the cast-iron pipes, but it's the only way he can stretch out flat on the mattress, and she says she has more faith in his control now than she did yesterday. He's glad that somebody does. "I'll bring you more to eat tonight," she says. He lies down, listening to her on the other side of the divider wall, pulling her coat back on. If he pretended, fantasized, he could imagine she's just gotten out of his bed, or she's just about to get into it. That he's not… this beast, chained up. The object of her pity, her disappointment. "Okay?" she says.

"Karppi," he says, and she comes around the wall to look at him. He keeps his eyes safely on the wall, inches from his face. "It's not… it wasn't human," he says. "Was it?"

"Pig," she says. She leans down. Strokes his hair, the back of his head, with one tentative, unbearably gentle hand. "Don't worry." And then she's gone. It's just him and his handcuffs and his unexpected erection. Sakari turns his face into a pillow and sighs. 

He dreams in the long slow slog of daytime, eventually: real dreams, thick and strange. Last night he only dozed but this time he sinks down fully and stickily into his subconscious like it’s mud, quicksand. He is running through the woods in the dark, chasing something, like the night he lost the cyclist between the trees. He can hear the bike chain whirring and his own loud breath in his ears and the cracking twigs under his feet; he runs and his heart pumps hard, harder, and he lands on top of a body, a hot body pulsing with blood. He rips at the collar of a coat and he's circling a throat with both hands, dipping his head to lick the fluttering pulse point, then rearing back to chomp the flesh with his razorteeth, goring and sucking. The artery gushes and pumps blood straight to the back of his throat; he yells with delight, with savage joy, bares his fangs and rubs his mouth and cheeks in the spray. He sits up, fuller and happier than he's ever been, and stares down at Karppi's bloodied, barely recognizable face, sightless and limp beneath his red hands. 

He screams and drops her and staggers back on his knees, and lands on something soft and cooling; he falls into his back and then he's eye level with Laura, so pale she's grey, with a blackening chunk of her cheek flesh missing. There are flies in her eyes; he pushes back from her, staggers to his feet and sees a smaller body piled behind hers, tiny and motionless, tiny fingers limp in a pool of dark stains—

Sakari screams himself awake and then lies panting in his bed with his free hand over his face, trying to keep from hyperventilating; he doesn't need to breathe but he can't stop jerking the air in and out of himself, gulping with hysteria. Finally he stops and lies there perfectly still, heart silent and lungs useless. It's worse. It's so much worse. His eyes fill with tears and he doesn't bother to stop them, he couldn't even begin; the horror of his own dead body is just too much to bear. 

In the morning he's already awake when she comes up the stairs; he hears her footsteps and closes his eyes to savor the sound of them, the approaching beat of her heart. She comes around the divider and he tucks his face into his arm to keep from looking at her. He can't stop seeing the blank, flattened eyes from his dream. "Oh," Karppi says, gasping. "What's wrong?" She kneels down next to the bed, rustles the sheets as she reaches for him, cups his chin, turns him towards her. He doesn't resist. Everywhere she touches him is like light pouring into his body. It’s paralyzing. "Are you okay?"

He laughs.

Karppi frowns at him. "You know what I mean," she says. She wipes under his eye with her thumb and holds it up for him: even in the dimmed light of his room, he can see it's come away flecked with blood. "What is this?"

"I don't know," he says, hoarsely. "Nothing happened."

"Were you," Karppi says, and trails off. He blinks and turns away. She knows, of course. He feels unbearably pathetic. But Karppi doesn't say anything. She unlocks his single cuff and hands him a paper bag and leaves, goes into the bathroom. He opens one of the pints of blood and sucks it down without hesitating; he tries not to focus on the taste, the warming sensation, the tingling satisfaction it spreads across his body. It’s not as wildly intense as the first time but it’s incredible, horrifyingly wonderful. He's setting the empty container back in the bag when Karppi comes back with a warm, wet washcloth in her hand. "Here," she says, and kneels down in front of him. Maybe she meant to just hand it to him, but his hands are full, and she doesn't hesitate: she leans up and presses the edge under his eye, rubs it tenderly outward in a half circle. He can feel the crusted blood on his cheek start to loosen. Her eyes meet his and they're—they're just so beautiful, so kind he can't speak, can't do anything but tear up again, fresh drops spilling from his lashes and rolling slow and hot down the swell of his cheek. "Oh," she says, stunned, soft. She doesn't pull her hand away. "It's… so strange," she says.

"It's disgusting," he snaps at her, and pushes at her arm, shifts away. She drops the washcloth in his lap, her face going stony, and he takes it to scrub at his eyes himself. He wipes clean and takes the other pint into the kitchen to drain it perfunctorily. She follows him, after a beat. "Thanks," he says, brusquely, nodding at the empty container. He drops it into the sink and wipes his mouth with a towel.

"You didn't choose this," Karppi says. She folds her arms over her chest. "Somebody did this to you."

"Yeah," he says. "That makes it okay."

"Why are you acting like this?"

"Why are you?" he snaps. "What do you want from me? I'm not your partner anymore. I'm a fucking—thing. Get that through your head.” His face aches with the fangs itching to come forward. “You need to leave me alone,” he bites out.

"Oh, I do, do I," Karppi says, dangerously. "I should leave you alone. So you can go kill yourself?"

"You wouldn't do it," he snarls. "So I guess I have to."

Karppi steps forward and—slaps him. Actually slaps him. The flat of her palm makes a sharp cracking sound across the flesh of his face. He bares his teeth and feels his fangs emerge and he pushes her backwards with both hands, not hard but not gently; her shoulders touch against the kitchen wall and his arms trap her there, on either side. She grabs the collar of his t-shirt, wraps it in her fist. Shakes him, hard.

"You want to hurt me?" she says. "I don't think you do anymore. You're controlling it." Her chin tilts up, stubborn as a mule, pure Karppi. "I think you're winning."

"Wrong," he says, furiously. "I want to tear your fucking throat out."

"Do you?" she says. "Really? Not the hunger. You?"

"Yes," he says. His chest heaves with the air he’s uselessly taking in. And then, lower, desperately, "No." He leans his ridged forehead down. Whispers beside her ear. "No," he says, and finds that he means it. Down to his bones. She leans her head up, and then his nose is in her hair. He inhales her just for the scent of it, the strong chemical wildflowers and coconut oil, the musk of her skin beneath. "Sofia," he says, raggedly, and she leans up and touches the corner of his mouth with hers; the fangs behind his lips recede and then he's kissing her with his human face, feeling the warm soft slash of her parted lips. Her tongue slides against his and she hitches herself against his thigh and his whole body flushes warmer and prickly-tender, the borrowed blood filling him to the brim. He slides his hands down the wall and around her waist, pulling her precious heat closer and brushing his fingers under the hem of her sweater, against her bare skin. It's like touching lightning, like swallowing stars; he's never been this hard in his whole life, never felt so much at once. 

She walks him backwards to his own bed and presses his shoulders down until he's sitting; strips her sweater off and then comes down to settle on his lap, knees on either side of his hips. She pulls his t-shirt off over his head. He's still half dressed but he feels naked when she pulls his arms out of his sleeves; naked and young and eager and frightened, and so in love he thinks he might not be dead at all. He kisses her throat and rubs his face against it, incandescent with joy, drunk with the feeling of her bare skin, hyperaware of every hiccuping breath she takes when his fingers press into her back, below her bra. He mouths her pulse and for a second it’s too much, too like the dream: he pulls back and stares at her, bare and afraid, but she doesn’t let him go. She twists her fingers in the hair at the back of his head, pulls him gently back for her to regard. Strokes down his chest with her other hand, lighting every inch of him on fire. Her hair is falling into her face; her mouth is red from kissing and her eyes are soft as clouds.

He would rather die than hurt her, he thinks, with clarity. He would rather somebody cut his head off and burned him to ash. Maybe someday, somebody will. He has no idea what’s going to happen to them tomorrow.

But here, now, Karppi presses down into his lap, tugs at his hair, molds her hot center to his until he bucks up and almost cries out from the sensation. Everything's too much, and not enough. He could never be close enough.

“You can be gentle,” she murmurs. “Can’t you?”

 _For you_ , he thinks. Yes. For her he could be anything.

When he wakes up it’s still night and Karppi is asleep beside him, restlessly. Her fingers twitch in the sheets. He sits up on one elbow and takes her hand and presses a kiss to the back of it, kisses down her fingers and up her wrist, softly, with the barest pressure. Kisses up her forearm and strokes the back of her elbow. Karppi wakes up slowly and blinks at him; her face curves into a shaky smile. If he had a heart anymore it would be throbbing in his ears. He holds her hand against his cheek and smiles, too. 

“Sappy,” she says, and pushes on him a little, but her face looks the way his feels. It’s a kind of mirror, he thinks. The only one he can see clearly.

They dress in the quiet and head for the car; there will be few people in the station at this time of night, easier to slip in and take another pass through the files. They can probably match Sten’s movements to the cases with a little footwork, at least well enough to support a warrant. He drives. At a stoplight he reaches over, rests a hand on her knee. She’s so warm under her jeans; he knows it’s stupid, that her leg is perfectly normal and he’s the cold and strange one, but it’s just so good to feel her, hold her. Some animal part of him longs for it. The contact makes him feel… better. Real. Karppi looks at him like he’s grown a third head. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” he says. It’s true; he’s never been like this with another woman. He’s not normally that kind of guy at all. He squeezes her knee and she laughs, startled, and swats at him. He can’t contain the stupid, happy face he’s making. 

They slide into a spot next to his actual car, which has spent days in the underground lot now. He’s not sure how Karppi explained the borrowed sedan to the bureau in Tallinn; she told him she took his body back in the trunk and crossed over on the ferry, terrified that someone would call in the car and stop her. Whatever she told them, it must have convinced them enough to let her hang onto it for now. He can’t say he’ll miss it when it’s gone. 

“I wonder,” she says, opening the passenger door and stepping out. “Can you still drink coffee?” He gives her a shocked look. He hadn’t even considered it.

“I hope so,” he says, and swings up out of the car and—freezes. There’s a scent, faint but acidic, lingering in the garage. He tilts his face up and inhales to catch the scent. “Karppi,” he says, low. “The smell.” She glances at him and shuts her car door, softly. 

“Here?” she murmurs. He nods. “Close?” He shrugs, barely. She’s standing still and casual, relaxed against the side of the car, while her gaze darts around into the corners of the garage, past his shoulders. 

“Go,” he says, quietly. Karppi’s eyes meet his again, solid and trusting. “I’m right behind you.” 

When she turns and walks briskly away from the car, towards the double doors, something streaks out from behind one of the transport vans and runs for her; she has barely a second to sight it and leap into a sprint. It’s almost on her when Sakari tackles it bodily and hurtles away with it across the concrete, scraping and crashing and rolling on the ground. Karppi keeps going, thankfully; meanwhile the thing manhandles him up and rakes across his face with ragged nails. His cheek opens, spraying blood across them both, and Sakari’s fangs descend; he smashes his fist into the other creature’s face, harder than he’s ever hit anyone in his life, and feels bone shatter. It’s ugly, exhilarating; he’s panting unnecessarily with satisfaction and fury as he strikes again. He tries to lock his knee behind its leg and bring it down but it’s strong, much stronger than him: it grabs him by the throat and lifts him up, slams him down hard on the windshield of the borrowed sedan. The hood bends and glass fragments shatter around his head. For a second he blacks out and sees nothing but pinpricks of light behind his lids. And then there’s a horrible swelling of rage inside him, like the roaring of a jet engine, and he pushes off the car and shakes loose and kicks out to try and break a knee. The creature ducks and bobs around him, shoves him off-balance into a van, claws at his belly; Sakari grabs an arm and tears into it with all four fangs. His teeth slice through the canvas jacket like it’s tissue paper. He digs deeper and rips a chunk of flesh out of the thing’s bicep and spits it across the garage floor and throws it into the side of another car. It rolls and springs up and circles him, bent at the waist, hands up in a fighter’s crouch. It doesn’t even seem to be in pain. It lunges for him and he skips out of the way and snarls, swiping back and missing.

And then the thing—laughs at him. It’s a man, older, dark-haired, with a lined face distorted by ridges and fangs, like his. He’s wearing a plain jacket and dark heavy work pants; the kind of man Sakari could pass on the street without noticing. There’s a dark stain around its mouth, which hangs open. Its tongue lolls out. 

“Pretty good, kid,” it says, in a thick voice. “But not good enough.”

“Fuck you,” Sakari hisses, and moves to grapple again, but a pinprick in his back startles him and he turns around to find a blurring shape standing at the other end of the garage. It’s someone tall and wide in a balaclava holding an air rifle. “What,” he has time to say, and then something is pulling a heavy blanket over his senses: his legs wobble and he collapses backwards against the side of a car and slides down, clutching at the rearview mirror to stay upright. He fights it and his legs kick out, feebly, and then his hands stop clenching and he tips down onto the concrete, twitching, struggling to keep his eyes open. The world is sideways and he can’t move, can’t think. His eyelids are like lead and his head is swimming. There’s something pulling him downward, something inexorable and hard as stone, infinitely stronger than he is. 

So down he goes.

He surfaces underwater, literally: he’s upside-down, surrounded by shockingly cold seawater. He struggles to lift himself up but his arms are behind his back and his knees and ankles are bound; all his can do is twist like a fish at the end of a line and spray muffled, choking screams into the depths. He isn’t drowning. There’s no air in his chest anymore. His mind is clearing the drugs off, but his head throbs from the pressure of the water and the unpleasant tug of gravity on all his limbs. Finally there’s a jerk and a pulling sensation and he’s being lifted straight up, feet-first, into the air. He hangs there and spews water for a solid twenty seconds, spitting and coughing as it empties back out of his lungs. 

“Feels strange, doesn’t it,” Sten says, from somewhere to the side. Sakari turns his head and swings his shoulders a little, twists enough to see Sten’s bulky legs and boots on the platform beside him. They’re indoors, some kind of shed. There’s a hole in the floor directly under his head where he was lowered into the water. It’s still churning darkly below him. A boathouse, or an ice-fishing cabin. He can’t remember if Sten has either on his property, if this is somewhere they’ll be able to connect to him. “Not drowning.” Sten chuckles. “Someday I’ll have to try it for myself.”

“You’re a sicko,” Sakari says. He spits water onto the deck. “Working with that thing.”

“Could say the same about Karppi,” Sten says, thoughtfully, and Sakari jerks against the ropes again. “She surprised me, you know. I really thought she’d put you down by now. If you didn’t do her the favor first.”

“Why the kids?” Sakari says. Contorts himself to try and see Sten’s face. “Why kill teenagers? What’s wrong with you?”

“Drug dealers,” Sten corrects. “It’s a test.”

“ _What_?”

“To prove myself,” he says. “My mentor only takes the best.” Sten slaps Sakari’s side and another little jet of water spouts out of him, painfully. “Not counting you, of course. That was an improvisation.”

“That thing,” Sakari says. “You’re proving yourself to that?”

Sten grabs Sakari’s hair in his fist and jerks him backwards until he cries out, back muscles seizing in agony. He shakes Sakari’s head like a toy in a dog’s mouth.

“You don’t know anything,” he hisses. “He’s done more for this world than you ever have or ever will.” There’s blood running from Sakari’s eyes, stinging and dripping into the water below. “He’s the final justice, you understand? He’s the thing that criminals will fear. They don’t fear us. They laugh at us. Defy us. But there’s no defying him.” Sten lets him go and Sakari sags back down, turning slowly on the chain. “And when I’m ready I’ll join him. Forever.”

Saari shuts his eyes and tries not to laugh hysterically. He feels like a balloon a second away from popping.

“A fucking vampire,” he says. He’s light-headed from the ducking and the pain. None of this feels real at all. It’s a horrible, twisted fantasy world. Maybe he really did die and this is hell. Or a hallucination. “You were trying to impress some kind of…. narco cop vampire.” He barks a short, sharp, painful laugh. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Sten steps back for a second and then kicks him roundhouse-style, right in the ribs. “Christ!” Sten grins.

“Your generation,” he says, “just doesn’t take things seriously.”

Sten flips the hatch down onto the floor and then lowers him onto it. He walks a few feet away to a little cabinet and opens it, humming to himself. Sakari’s limbs unkink slowly and he rolls up onto his side, sits up awkwardly. His knees and arms are still wrapped up too tightly for him to get much play in the ropes, but he rocks from side to side a little anyway, trying to loosen them while Sten’s not watching. “You know,” Sten says, fiddling with something in the cabinet, “you should be thinking about your future.”

“What future?” Sakari says. He didn’t mean to sound so bitter. 

“The future you could have with us,” Sten says. He turns around and now Sakari can see he’s holding a folding knife and a set of pliers. A shudder of fear goes through him, leaving him shocky and suddenly freezing. “My mentor doesn’t throw away the ones he makes so lightly, you know. He’s still willing to consider you, if you’re willing to learn.”

“You’ll be caught,” Sakari says. “This is all going to end.”

“Oh, it’ll end,” says Sten. “But not the way you’re hoping.” He unfolds the knife. “When was the last time you fed?” Sakari keeps his mouth shut; his ridges shift under his skin. “It doesn’t matter. The more you’re damaged, the hungrier you’ll get.” He goes down on one knee and sticks the knife into Sakari’s arm and holds it there while Sakari screams and screams and screams. “And I want you nice and hungry when she finds you.”

Static, in Sakari’s head: static, and now rage. He doesn’t think at all, he just rolls right into Sten with all his weight and force, taking the knife out of his hand and startling him enough that he falls backwards onto the slippery hatch. It was a mistake on Sten’s part, getting this close. He’s sliding onto his back when Sakari’s fangs latch onto his thigh and tear out a chunk of flesh and fabric. Sakari sucks viciously at the wound, tearing and swallowing, biting at the artery below the muscle until it sprays like a geyser, so hot it steams in the air. Sten screams and punches him in the back of the neck but Sakari’s got four fangs into his meat and he’s not letting go. He rolls the weight of his torso over Sten’s legs and twists his knees up into Sten’s gut, kicking at his face. Sten flails and grabs for the knife, still sticking out of Sakari’s arm, and digs it out. He sinks the knife into the backs of Sakari’s legs and shrieks and shoves at him, but something strange is happening. Sakari can feel him slowing down. Weakening. He sucks at the opened artery and gulps the blood down, but there’s so much spray he can barely catch it all: it runs down his face and onto the ground around them, soaking into their clothes. Sten gasps and hits him and tries to stick the knife into his back but he no longer has the force to sink the knife in: Sakari wriggles and knocks it from his hand and kicks him in the general direction of his face again. Sten goes down and another hot rush of blood pumps out into Sakari’s mouth, the rest leaking into the water below them. Sten flops and murmurs and his heartbeat slows to a crawl. Bright blood pumps sluggishly out of his leg. Sakari takes another mouthful and then rolls off of him. He feels feverish with the heat of the blood—God, the coal-hot sensation in his mouth, in his gut and his limbs! It’s like the first night of the pig’s blood but even better, even richer. Straight from the vein it’s like drinking pure starlight, like melting and being reborn in a forge of pain and glory. Sakari lies on the floor like a drunk and laughs softly to himself and licks his lips and sees bright shapes and lines in passing on the ceiling of the shed, like the traverse of the sun. 

At some point, Sten dies.

Sakari lies on the floor of the shed, cooling, in the puddle of blood and seawater. The fury is fading and so is the euphoria. He can almost wriggle his legs out of the ropes but he feels strangely leaden. The water below them laps at the bottom of the shed, choppily, a pattering imitation of an absent heartbeat.

She finds him like that. He doesn’t know how long he was lying there before she arrived; the smell of her, the specific sound of her footsteps, rouses him back to awareness. She bends over him, her hair falling down like a curtain to shelter his face, to make it so that they are the only two people in a private little world.

“Sten,” he says, groggily. “He’s…”

“I can see,” she says. Her heart is racing. He blinks and notices there’s a smear of blood on her forehead. 

“Are you okay?”

Karppi snorts.

“You should see yourself,” she says. There’s a scuffling sound from the outside of the shed and Karppi tenses. “I shot him in the chest,” she says. They both know who she means. “But I did that last time, too.” She tugs at his shoulders, getting him more or less upright. “He’s still out there.”

“Untie me,” he says. “I can track him.”

Karppi gives him a long, considering look. He tries not to shrivel up under it. He can’t imagine how hideous he must look. How frightening. A demon, asking to be unchained. But Karppi does it anyway, kneels and rummages around for the bloodied knife on the floor and sticks it under the rope binding his arms. She saws at it until it loosens and he can slip the coil over his head. He frees his own legs and looks up to find her standing already, hand extended. He takes her hand and Karppi steadies him upright. They stand like that for a second, close, her face turned up to his bloody mask, her hand still folded inside his. He rubs the back of her fingers with his thumb.

“You’re okay?” Karppi says, softly, like he’s not covered in someone else’s lifeblood and gore. He nods and lets go of her and moves to the door of the shed. The sky is getting lighter, barely, at the edges. It must be less than an hour to dawn. He scents the air. The pepper-scent is hanging in the mild night breeze like a ribbon, drawing him on.

“Stay here,” he says, and doesn’t stay to hear her _no._

Sakari runs like a deer through the woods: his limbs feel weightless and infinite and his head is clear as crystal. If he felt like an arrow before, now he is loosed. Tireless and effervescent he runs along the scent-trail left by the vampire, by his...maker. He’s close at heel, judging from the blood drops on the bushes. Karppi must have hurt him more than she thought. Sakari stops at the fork in the path and inhales and sees a blur of motion skidding down the hill. He leaps down after him and stumbles a little down the uneven slope. The vampire swipes at him but his leg catches in the mud and he swings wide, falling towards Sakari and clawing at his throat. Sakari grabs him on either side of his hideous face and—twists, savagely. The vampire’s neck snaps and his limbs go loose and helpless. He drops from Sakari’s grasp and slumps onto the ground, his head at a hideous angle from his body. Sakari stands over him, panting from the habit of it, and the vampire makes a long, low, nasty, deflating sound.

He is still conscious.

Sakari paces in a circle around him, hands fisted in his hair. Letting the bloodlust settle. Calming down. Running footsteps startle him and he looks up to see Karppi skidding down the hill, gun in hand. She stops a few feet from the twitching vampire, eyes wide.

“Bitch,” the vampire hisses, thinly. Sakari kicks him in the back. 

“He’ll heal,” says Karppi. She holsters her gun and looks back the way she came, through the woods. “I don’t know how we’ll explain him.”

“You called it in?”

“No,” she says. “I didn’t know what I could say.” She turns her face, out of his sight. “How to explain you.”

Sakari hefts the limp vampire over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry; the weight barely bothers him. They take him back down to the shed at the bottom of Sten’s driveway and set him down behind it, in view of the water. Karppi ties him up and they stand there at the shoreline for a while, out of sight from the road. She picks at her thumbnail with her teeth.

"I'm sorry I was so slow," she says, after a while. "At the garage. I came down with others but you were already gone."

“It's okay," he says. "You should go home." 

“Oh?” She bites the edge of the nail off. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll,” he says. “Clean this up.” She scoffs.

“It’s like a butcher’s floor in there. I don’t think you can.” She yawns. “You should wash off here, though. Before you get in the car.”

“I’m not getting in the car,” he says. Karppi glances up at him. “You should go.” It takes a second, but then her face screws up with rage. 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she says.

“The sun will take us,” Sakari says. “And then, it’s—done.” Her anger ignites his and now they’re staring at each other grimly, close and fuming. He has no idea which face he’s currently wearing, but either way it burns. His eyes are close to brimming over again. He can’t stand how little control he has over himself anymore, it’s crazy, it’s horrible, and he can’t see an end in sight. Karppi starts to disagree but he just talks over her. “When they find Sten they’ll find my DNA all over him, so it’s better if I’m just—”

“Better for who?” Karppi yells. “Better for you? Selfish, son of a bitch,” she says, and shoves at his chest. She walks away from him and wraps her arms around herself, paces. Stops. Inhales, wrenchingly.

“Sofia,” he says.

“When I found you I thought you were already dead,” she says, without facing him. “Your body was face-down behind the house and you were blue all over.” She laughs, bitterly. “And your throat was torn out.” He doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t think about that: about Karppi standing over his dead body, woozy from a head wound, all alone. He didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know, maybe. “I turned you over and there was grass and blood in your mouth. Your eyes were open,” she says. “You looked so… I can’t stop seeing them. It was like—it was like before. When I went to see his body, after,” she says, and goes silent.

Stones drop in his gut.

He walks up, hesitantly. Stands against her back until she sighs and leans back into him, lets his arms slide around hers. She’s not so big, this lioness. He forgets, sometimes. The force of her is so much larger than her body. She looms over his view of the world like a giant. 

“I told you, I shouldn’t be a father,” he says, against her ear. “I only ever think about myself.”

Karppi slides her hands around his arms; holds him against her, tight.

“I have an idea,” she says. “But you’d have to trust me.” He smiles, his cheek against her hair. Trust her? She’s the only thing he trusts.

“Okay,” he says.

“You didn’t even hear it yet,” she grumbles. “It involves shooting you and drugging you again, you know.”

“Okay,” he repeats, and kisses the side of her head, lips careful over his fangs.

When she unzips the bodybag the overhead lights wash out the world for a second; he blinks against the light and Karppi’s hair brushes his face an instant before her hand does. It makes his nonexistent pulse almost flutter into existence. She slides her palm against his neck and whispers, “You okay?”

“Never better,” he says. Karppi smacks him on his naked chest and he sits up, wrestling free of the zipper. 

They’re in a garage, somewhere. He doesn’t recognize it. He does recognize his car, taking up most of the space. She hands him jeans and a sweater and he dresses quickly, pulls his socks and boots on and then joins her in the car. It’s like a cocoon in there, inside the garage: it muffles the world around them, shell inside shell. He drinks down the pints she's brought him. He could use more, but it can wait. “How did it go?”

“Fine,” she says. “The cameras in the morgue won’t come back on for an hour.”

“Nicely done,” he says, and stretches back. Strange to be in the passenger seat, he thinks. But it’s okay.

Karppi shot him with Sten’s gun in Sten’s dead hand and then called it in. She waited until they heard the sound of cars approaching and then shot him full of Sten’s tranquilizer cocktail, as much as he thought he could stand. Breathless and lacking a pulse, they’d cart him away to the morgue, where she’d pick him up later. 

“You know he had Kulju in his trunk?” she says. He gives her a surprised look. “That plus the burned body behind the shed, and you riddled with holes…” she says, and shrugs. “Maniac killer, they’re saying.”

“How did they explain the leg?” He shouldn’t ask, but he can’t help it. 

“A bear,” Karppi says.

“What?”

“They think a bear was lured in by the scent of your blood.”

“Huh,” he says. He stares out through the windshield at the closed garage door. Maybe most people just don’t want to know things, he thinks.

“You’ll have to dye your hair or something,” she says, interrupting his existential train of thought. "Hide in plain sight." She picks at the matted curl over his forehead; two days in a bodybag hasn’t exactly done his style any favors. “It won’t be easy, not having an identity.”

“I’ll get forged papers.”

“Great,” she says. “I’m harboring a criminal.”

“You’re the one who wanted to keep me,” he says, but there’s no bite in it. He leans his temple on the headrest to look at her.

“Yes,” she says. She’s smiling. It’s like sunrise. If he lives a hundred years he’ll never see anything more beautiful than this. He reaches between the seats and her hand meets his, halfway. “I am.”

.


End file.
